Year 4, Month 3, Day 14: I Feel Pretty

The Orlando Sentinel considers the question of water supplies, and wonders:

…how might climate change play out at a local level? Will the amount of fresh water in the Floridan Aquifer or the Kissimmee and St. Johns rivers shrink to critically low levels? And which coastal cities’ wells are most likely to become fouled by seawater?

Spurred by that lack of location-specific knowledge, a half-dozen Florida water utilities, along with state water managers and some university scientists, have formed a grass-roots alliance to do what otherwise isn’t being done: Figure out what climate change will do in different parts of Florida and devise ways to ensure enough water for the state’s counties and cities in the years and decades to come.

“It’s a very big concern of ours,” said Rob Teegarden, vice president of Orlando Utilities Commission’s water division. “The world and the nation have no plan for serious climate-policy initiatives. People have their desires, but they aren’t there yet, and we’re trying to seriously figure it out.”

Don’t mention who’s responsible for the “no plan” part. March 5:

By all means acknowledge that climate change will to impact Florida’s water supplies, and that there’s been too little action at the federal level on this issue. But it’s important to understand that there’s been little or no meaningful policy response from Washington on what’s perhaps the most important issue facing America and the world because Republican politicians have adopted such extreme anti-science attitudes that reality-based positions no longer have any place in the legislative agenda.

Scientific method is a great way to develop an accurate picture of the universe and how it works. Since environment and energy policies are implemented in the real world, it makes sense to base them on the findings of scientists rather than hidebound ideologies. But until the GOP stops steeping itself in an anti-intellectual teapot, Floridians are on their own when it comes to coping with the consequences of a radically transforming climate.

Warren Senders